Social Software Explored

As a part-time product manager (and a true fan of products, marketing and advertising in general) - I have to mention the phenomenon that is the “New” Facebook.  Quite frankly, I could give a crap.  Like almost any UI or system - we will adapt and the new users that come after us will not know the difference.  I have gone from Mosaic to Netscape to IE to Firefox - it’s all about change.  So who cares. 

If you are product manager - you should.

There are two main factors which make this switch for Facebook so interesting:

1.) Facebook’s delivery model is similar to that of a SaaS

2.) Facebook presents an interesting collaboration model which allows customer’s voices to be heard (sort of)

Product Management in a SaaS model

Lets take the fist portion of this - SaaS (or Software as a Service).  The “Service” that Facebook provides here is simple - communication.  We can use this platform to communicate easily with people we know and to a certain extent - don’t know.  Applications are making it easy and fun to do things like track our movie and music tastes to posting photos and videos of our latest adventures - all on the same server. 

Which means that when Facebook wants to make a change it is instantaneous - they just post the change.  In traditional software - or non SaaS models (like ours) the change is more gradual and does not effect the entire customer base.  You post a patch or a hot fix - those people affected (or brave enough to try it) download it and the change is made.  Rarely, do you hit more than 20% of your users at a time.

The “New” Facebook was available to anyone by simply adding “new” into their URL like: http://www.NEW.facebook.com.  Although, most people didn’t know this - the changes were visible immediately.  All your friends, their updates, your updates, your applications - instantaneous.  Sweet.

As a product manager of a more traditional software environment I envy the SaaS model.  Deployment on a single platform has these added benefits:

• Simple delivery model with a known platform
• Coordinated testing with pre-defined groups (e.g. these users get the new Facebook while these other users get the old)
• Instant feedback
• Soft launch
• Controlled roll-out

There are some other advantages to this type of model but I want to focus on a more important benefit that Facebook has when it comes to Product Management.  User feedback.

Like or not - you CAN NOT please everyone.  I can not repeat that enough.  However, without upgrades designed specifically to address user feedback your product can and will alienate your customer base.

If you search for the term “New Facebook” using the Facebook Search and you click on Groups you will find over 500 groups with that term in its name or description.  Dig through those results and you will find groups like these:

• People against the New Facebook System (47,294 members)
• The New Facebook Layout SUCKS! (9,188 members)
• I HATE the New Facebook (3,683 members)
• The New Facebook Sucks (2,113 members)
• I hate the new facebook - change it back! (2,588 members)
• i HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK (obviously group names are case sensitive) - (2,320 members)
• The NEW Facebook SUCKKKKSS - Change it BACKKKK (2,233 members)

Managing Customer Feedback

When your customer base becomes contributors - the results are amazing.  These groups don’t mean that new Facebook sucks especially if you compare the size of these groups against the number of facebook users as a whole - more than 60 million active users as of the beginning of 2008 (source).

[As I write this - Facebook is down - hee hee]

However, what you do have is the best collection of user feedback that a Product Manager could ever ask for - without having to lift a finger.  They didn’t have to do anything. Nothing. Nada.

Just build the new software - put it out there so people could see/use it and wait.  Surely digging through the feedback is tough.  The “People against the New Facebook System” has over 1,700 wall posts and 55 Threaded discussions.  Mixed in this garbage of useless responses and posts like “Facebook sucks” and “Bring back the old Facebook” are some truly genuine criticisms like:

Jonathan M. Cajigas wroteon Aug 12, 2008 at 10:57 PM

Since I have no idea how to program anything but an alarm clock, I’m curious if anyone in this group with programming knowledge could comment on the feasibility of writing a Gresemonkey script or Firefox Add-On that would let Firefox users keep using the old Facebook, even after the eventual switch.

Robert Heller (Springfield, MA) replied to Jo’s post on Aug 6, 2008 at 11:16 AM

9) It seems to want a wider browser window. The old facebook fit on my 800 pixel wide browser window (yes, I have a 1024×768 pixel screen and no, I *DON’T* (and won’t) maximize my windows).
10) Seems to want flash player. I don’t have flash player installed and no I *DON’T* want to install flash player — I avoid sites that depend on flash player for navigation. Flash is seriously bad news as fas as I am concerned. If flash player becomes *required* for facebook, I am likely to quit facebook.

Jennifer Hale (Uni. Southampton) wrote on Aug 11, 2008 at 12:43 AM

Since the left hand navigation bar has gone, to get anywhere you have to go back to the home page and start again. I liked the fact that I could just jump from one page to another.
I will have to go back into the new Facebook (sighs and pulls face) just to find and list all the things that are now more awkward to use.
I liked the fact that the page was narrower before. It means you never had a problem viewing the page whatever resolution screen you had. The old Facebook just seemed cleaner and tidier to use. Yes some people’s profiles were so application filled that you couldn’t find the wall to send them a message, but that is their choice. I do have a few applications, but I always ensured that most of them were closed (minimised) or below my wall so people could access it easily.

My only criticism that I can see is that Facebook hasn’t made it public that it is listening to its customers.  I am sure that they have reasons but with all of this feedback (and some of it good) it would be interesting to see some interaction with Facebook Product Managers and/or developers.

Conclusion

The new application framework models (like SaaS) present some interesting benefits for Product Management and customer relations.  Additionally, the social media aspect of Product Management today is an improvement on old style customer relations.

Uncategorized Community, facebook, product management, Social Networking

Remember the spring of your senior year in high school?  When you had applied (and been accepted) to college already.  Remember your Guidance Counselor told you that you still needed to keep your grades up - that colleges looked at your final grades very seriously?  Remember that feeling you had towards High School - that “checked out” feeling?

That is kind of how I look at our president.  In his longest trip on foreign soil during his presidency (and the only visit to an Olympic Games by a president anywhere other than in the US) - George looks like he has “checked-out” (or at least the press secretary has…)

Take a look at these photos which can be found collectively here and here in the NBC.com Olympics photo galleries.  What?!?

Um… take a picture please I am an idiot

Do you think that Misty feels obligated?

Hopefully this display is for those seated behind him

And my favorite … no comment

Uncategorized george bush, nbcolympics.com, olympics, photos, press secretary

I know that I don’t live in the time of the Minority Report or iRobot and I also know that I have a pretty big imagination but I kind of thought that computers were here to serve us.  While we are pretty far away from a central computer in our house asking us if they can turn our favorite music on or prepare some popcorn for the movie viewing time we have scheduled, I think we need to re-establish expectations.

Computer = No Help

Maybe I am being cynical but today my computer really only asks me to do things

• There are 150 e-mails waiting for your input in your Unread Box
• You have 24 meetings today you need to attend
• There are 12 tasks outlined as “High Priority” due yesterday
• AVG 7.5 needs to be upgraded (oh and by the way it is no longer free)

Rarely can I say to my computer: “Hey why don’t you get started on organizing those tasks in the project plan” or “When are you going to convert that Statement of Work to a PDF - the customer needs it tomorrow”.  Ok not even “rarely” - never.

I often wonder what it would be like to be totally connected to my computer.  I know that they are doing some cool things up the road at MIT and other Biotech companies related to integrated mind computers.  Mostly now these projects are isolated to paralysis victims or those hindered with MS - but I think I am ready.

Ok, so that won’t happen anytime soon.

Pattern matching

So there is one thing that I also think about a lot which I think could be quite possible (e.g. the technology is available - but it would require some work).  Ever get caught doing repetitive tasks? As an occasional programmer and administrative assistant to myself I find times where a pattern matching program might be nice - and totally possible.

Take the following situation:

I often miss a complete day of Twitter (remember the number of meetings/emails outlined above - only a slight exaggeration).  Unfortunately, today the interface for  twitter does not accommodate the occasional missed day - you see - the timeline display for Twitter runs descending and they only display a certain number of tweets on a page.  In order, to read the tweets you missed (while you were off doing oh you know work) you have to go backwards.  Which means if a conversation took place where someone asked a question - you would see the answer before you saw the question - dumb.

So, what I do to solve this problem is to add Firefox toolbar bookmarks to my Twitter pages backwards.  Starting with the URL: http://www.twitter.com/home?page=10 (um - yeah it only goes to 10 pages so if you wait to long you miss everything - which is another story) and working may way back to http://www.twitter.com/home.

The task for doing this is quite repetitive and would go something like this

1. Create Twitter Folder on Firefox browser toolbar
2. Navigate to ?page=10 and drag to Twitter Folder
3. Navigate to ?page=9 and drag to Twitter Folder
4. Navigate to ?page=8 and drag to Twitter Folder
5. (Could use the pattern matcher right now …)
6. etc…

Computer = Help

What I would like my computer to “say” is this:

Ron, I see you are entering into a boring pattern related data entry task (and i would hope that this starts right after step 2 from above).  Should I copy multiple bookmarks stopping at ?page=1?

Where I would reply

Why thank you that would be great.

And now my computer would be doing tasks for me.  After taking with our development teams about our Automated QA program - where servers check in with a central QA management server to pick up their next set of QA test cases - I know that this possible.

Uncategorized AI, Software, time management, Twitter